


oh, father, tell me, do we get what we deserve?

by angelica_barnes



Series: ABC [21]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Again, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst with a Happy Ending, Because nope, Break Up, Falling In Love, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, I'm Sorry, I'm really really sorry, Multi, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love, but nope, i legit almost convinced myself to jump ship from my otp with this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 20:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20020891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: Sam loves Bucky. Bucky loves Steve. Steve loves Peggy.Oh dear.21. unrequited





	oh, father, tell me, do we get what we deserve?

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "Way Down We Go" by Kaleo
> 
> enjoy!!! (again i'm very sorry for this)

**unrequited love:**

**it’s like drowning**

**but you just**

**won’t**

**fucking**

**die.**

**\- Urban Dictionary**

  
  


Bucky has known, from the moment he laid eyes on Steve Rogers, that the blonde is it for him. The love of his life. The one and only. The person he’s been waiting for.

He also knows, a few years later down the line but still just as instantly, that he is not it for Steve. No, he’s something far worse.

He’s Steve’s first love.

And if that doesn’t just hurt like a bitch.

-

Steve’s known Peggy for five years now. He’s known Bucky his whole life, and yet somehow it feels like he’s known Peggy longer.

He kinda feels like he could drown in her love, and he sorta feels like he wouldn’t mind not breathing.

Which is why he kisses her a year after he and Bucky first kissed, and this escalates into making love in her bed and falling asleep beside her in the sheets until a few weeks later she shows up at his door in tears with a positive pregnancy test.

Steve spends the day with her, kisses her goodnight when she starts to doze off, tells her he loves her (because he does, he really does) and then as soon as she’s snoring he tucks her in and leaves a note on the table next to her and grabs his keys and rushes to his boyfriend’s house.

Though it’s three o-fucking-clock in the morning, Bucky opens up, like the saint he is, and he’s so beautiful in this light, rubbing at his eyes and mumbling questions that it makes Steve feel like throwing up, because how could he cheat on this angel, even if he doesn’t love him?

“Peggy’s pregnant,” he blurts, and the tears start to spill over, and Bucky just sighs and takes Steve’s hand and drags him inside.

He makes him hot cocoa and sits down next to Steve on the couch and as Steve opens his mouth to speak, Bucky holds up a finger and speaks himself.

“I know you, Stevie. You’re sorry. You didn’t mean to sleep with her. All a load of crap that I don’t have time to defuse, so I’m just gonna say this : you wouldn’t be telling me unless you were the father. So there are two ways this ends : either you love me and you’re here to beg for my forgiveness, which I would give you, or you love her and you’re here to try and make up for it.”

Bucky then gives Steve a sad smile.

“It’s okay. You and her will be amazing together, and I still forgive you for cheating on me. I always saw how you looked at her anyway.”

He stands and starts bustling about, taking Steve’s empty cup from his hands and grabbing a blanket from the closet and then he points towards the stairs.

“Go to sleep. I’ll take the couch tonight.”

And Steve may feel like he’s known Peggy longer, but that’s doesn’t change the fact that he’s known Bucky his whole life, and so while no one else may have, he hears the quiver in the brunette’s voice.

And he knows, as surely as he knows he loves Peggy, that Bucky loves him.

-

When Maria is born, there’s a thunderstorm outside. Bucky rushes to his pick-up truck and to the hospital in his pajamas and a hoodie, bursting through the doors and running a hand through his wet hair. He shivers, and his teeth chatter as he tries to speak; he’s soaked to the bone.

Sam’s there waiting. He takes Bucky by the hand and gives him a quick, reassuring smile before turning around and leading him into a room.

There’s Peggy, hair damp with sweat and cheeks pink, smiling down at the baby girl in her arms. Steve’s pressing kisses to his girlfriend’s and his daughter’s head, and something in Bucky’s heart clenches at the sight.

Steve looks up at them and Bucky swallows it down, smiling.

“What’s her name?” He asks, and a dreamy look glazes over Steve’s eyes.

“Maria Carolina Rogers,” Steve whispers, as if he can’t quite believe it, and Bucky feels the same way; he can’t quite believe this either.

Sam’s hand tightens in his and Bucky pushes down the nasty feeling in his stomach, instead opting to lean down and coo at the child, call her детка. (baby)

-

That night, Sam drives him home.

“You okay, man?” He asks, and Bucky just shrugs.

“I think I’m gonna enlist in the army,” is all he says and Sam just hums and says, “Okay,” weaving his fingers through Bucky’s on the console.

Bucky lets his head loll to the side and falls asleep.

(It’s one of the first nights he doesn’t cry, so he considers it a win.)

-

A month after the end of Bucky’s world and the start of Maria’s, Steve proposes to Peggy at graduation. Bucky’s in the audience, next to Sarah Rogers, who’s cradling Maria, and Sam, who’s holding Bucky’s hand in his even as the latter squeezes so hard Sam’s dark knuckles start paling.

“YES!” Peggy screams, and all the graduates and their families stand and applaud.

Bucky’s gone before Steve can even look his way (which he won’t, because he’s too busy searching for the universe in Peggy’s dark eyes) and Sam’s running after him, because he may not be what Bucky wants but he’s still Bucky’s boyfriend and he’ll stand by him even through always coming second.

The wedding is almost the most beautiful thing Bucky’s ever seen. The only thing kinder on the eyes is his angel, his Stevie, who’s standing up there with a smile as warm as the sun and vowing to always love someone else. Somebody who deserves him way more than Bucky ever did and ever will.

That night, Bucky takes care of Maria after Sarah’s fallen asleep in her rocking chair, and he curls up in Sam’s arms under the covers in the guest room.

“Love sucks,” he whispers, and closes his eyes, allowing a single tear to fall, and presses a kiss to Sam’s chest as he hears his boyfriend’s answer, the melancholy voice of resignment.

“Yeah, it does.”

-

When Maria is three she starts sleeping over at Bucky and Sam’s during the weekends. Steve’s not quite sure how he feels about it at first, but Peggy’s got this grave look on her face like she knows something final’s coming soon so he gives in and kisses her and Bucky greets him at the door.

Steve does his best to ignore the love in Bucky’s eyes when the brunette looks at him, tries to shove down the guilty feeling in his gut because he caused that pain, he’s  _ causing _ that pain  _ right now _ and even Sam - kind, wonderful, brokenhearted Sam - can’t love Bucky back together.

But now his arms are wrapped around Bucky from behind, his dark lips pressed against his boyfriend’s neck as they both take in the sight of Steve and his daughter on their front steps, until finally Bucky blinks and gently nudges Sam off so he can bend over and pick up his ex’s kid.

“We’ll take good care of her, Stevie,” he says, a solemn promise, and Sam nods behind him in agreement. Steve lets out a breath and nods himself, and then the door is closed and he’s walking back to his car alone.

“Sammy!” He hears. “Can we play?”

At home, Peggy’s waiting for him. She wraps her arms around his neck and buries her face in his chest and he holds her, until finally she manages to mumble out the truth.

“I’m sick, Steve. Our daughter needs to learn to live with her new parents.”

Steve’s hold tightens, but still, a month later, she slips through his fingers in her sleep.

-

The night Peggy dies, Sam’s outside in the hall with Bucky, the brunette in pajamas and curled against him, because they’re both exhausted and sad and uncomfortable, and they still don’t quite understand why they’re here - I mean, they do. Peggy’s dying, Peggy’s going to a better place, Peggy’s leaving them behind, but it hasn’t really sunk in. It probably won’t for awhile.

They fall asleep in those chairs and the hospital staff doesn’t have the heart to wake them and ask them to go home. They look too comfortable, too broken, too tired and they only open their eyes at nine o’clock when the door opens and there’s Steve, holding Maria’s hand even while his own shake.

Sam and Bucky immediately wrap them in their arms, and Maria isn’t crying because she’s three, she doesn’t really know what’s going on, but Steve just breaks down in their arms and sobs, sobs, sobs.

“What’s happening, папа?” Maria asks quietly, voice trembling. “Why is Papa so sad?”

Bucky just presses a kiss to her hair and shushes her, ignoring Sam’s worried eyes on him. “He just misses Mommy, is all.”

Maria doesn’t understand, “Why? She’s just in there, on the bed inside! She’s sleeping.”

Tears brim in Bucky’s eyes but he blinks them back, focusing on the feeling of Steve’s warmth wrapped around them and Sam’s hand on his back and this little girl cradled in his arms, and he whispers, “Yeah, sweetie. She’s just sleeping.”

“I hope she wakes up soon,” Maria says absently, playing with Bucky’s hair. “I wanna play.”

Bucky doesn’t have the words.

-

Steve takes Maria to his own car and starts driving to Bucky and Sam’s, while they themselves sit in their own car in silence.

“What’d she call you?” Sam asks, voice hoarse from disuse. “Inside. Папа?”

Bucky’s own voice is thick with tears when he answers.

“Daddy. She called me Daddy.”

He breaks down in Sam’s arms and Sam holds him until Steve calls them on the edge of a panic attack, wondering where they are.

Bucky guesses that when the one you love has just died, you start worrying when someone’s out of your sight for just over a minute.

-

Sam’s loved Bucky since the moment he met him.

He was the new kid, and Bucky was the bright-eyed one who protected the little Steve Rogers and then he met Sam and started protecting him, and yeah, Sam’s pretty sure it was that moment, when Bucky grinned down at him all banged-up and nose bloody like this was the best day of his life even though it was clearly one of the worst with his bloodshot eyes, that Sam fell in love with him.

Then the summer between junior and senior year happened, and now Bucky’s his boyfriend, has been for years, and Sam loves him even though Bucky’s not really his.

But he’s still here. He’s there when Bucky cries over Steve, and when Maria can’t sleep and crawls into Bucky’s arms in place of Sam, and when Bucky kisses him goodbye as the brunette gets on the plane that’ll take him away to Russia, because he’s still in the army and he still has to go, even though Steve’s a wreck and Peggy’s gone and he’s got a daughter that’s not really his who needs him.

And when Bucky returns, hair long and tangled and a metal arm in place of the left one, Sam rushes to him, throwing his arms around his boyfriend in a hug, and Bucky presses a kiss to his neck.

It’s then Sam realizes that he’ll spend forever with this man, even if everything but this man’s body doesn’t belong to him.

Because.

Sam’s loved Bucky all his life.

-

It’s been a year since Peggy died. Steve’s a little hollow. He’s not whole, that’s for sure, and Bucky tries his best to be careful with him - he knows what it feels like, missing your other half, because Bucky deals with it every day, for Steve and with Steve.

Then Steve calls Bucky one night, and he says one thing and suddenly Bucky’s pressing a kiss to Sam’s cheek and leaving the dinner table to go hide in the bathroom, and Sam worries the table cloth until his fingertips are burning.

Finally he can’t take it anymore and he climbs the stairs to the bathroom, sitting on the floor in the doorway of their bedroom. He can hear Bucky’s voice, anxious and soft and sad, like it always is when he has to tell the truth.

“Stevie,” Sam hears Bucky say, exasperated. “Steve, no. You’re drunk, you won’t remember this in the morning.”

There’s a pause.

“No, punk. Of course I care about you, I just know you’ll hate me forever if I agree to this. You’ll hate yourself, too.”

Another moment of silence, and when Bucky speaks again, he sounds haunted, voice raspy and weak, as if his whole world is being ripped from his fingers.

“You don’t mean that, Stevie,” he rasps. “You don’t love me. You love Peggy. And you can’t do this to yourself. You can’t trick yourself into thinking what you feel for me is anything like what you felt for her.”

Sam hears a quiet thump, and he knows Bucky must’ve just sunk to his knees.

“You can’t do this to me.”

With that, the sobs start up, and Sam chooses this moment to crawl over to the door and open it, being met with Bucky’s shaking back. He settles next to his boyfriend and wraps his arms around the brunette, holding him close and letting Bucky bury his face in Sam’s neck.

“I hate him,” Bucky croaks. “I hate him so much.”

God, Sam wishes that were even a semblance of something, even a  _ semblance _ of something other than a lie.

-

  
  


That night, Bucky stares up at the ceiling, Sam pressed against his side. He can’t sleep, though it’s close to three in the morning.

“God, punk,” he whispers, his voice hoarse from so much crying. Sometimes Bucky thinks he breathes tears. “God, you can’t do this me.”

But he can. Because Bucky gave him the power to when he fell for Steve and didn’t just go running for the hills like he should’ve when he first felt the twinge in his chest at the sight of Steve’s baby blue eyes.

“I love you,” he confesses to no one. “I love you, Stevie, but I won’t be your second choice. I won’t be your delusion.”

And Bucky can feel his heart breaking, breaking, as he refuses the chance to have everything he’s ever wanted, but it’s a short loss nonetheless; come morning, Steve would’ve been gone anyway.

(Sam hears all of this and stays silent, but also has the brief daydream of what life would’ve been like if he’d just run when he first saw Bucky.

God, their lives are a mess.

They’re a mess.)

-

They’re at home the day it happens.

“Mr. Barnes?” Says the lady through the phone.  _ That should be Stevie, _ Bucky thinks,  _ why the hell isn’t it Stevie? _

“Yes?” He says, and twines his fingers with Sam’s. His boyfriend immediately looks over at him, concern etched in his features, and Bucky can feel his vision blurring with tears as the lady explains what’s going on.

He hangs up abruptly and drops the phone with shaking hands, standing and grabbing his jacket and his keys. He pulls Sam with him out the door and the dark-skinned man follows without hesitation.

“Bucky? Bucky, what’s going on? Where are we going?”

But Bucky doesn’t stop until they’re in the car, and he’s crying silently now, breaths coming in short bursts. Sam takes his boyfriend’s hands in his as he tries to start the ignition, only to drop the keys, his hands are trembling so badly.

“Bucky. Look at me. Come on, look at me, baby.”

And when Bucky does, he looks heartbroken, even more heartbroken than he was when he and Steve broke up, when Maria was born, when Peggy died.

“Good, baby. Breathe with me, shhh.”

And Bucky does, his hands starting to still. Sam nods, taking in a deep breath himself, bracing himself for the bad news that’s sure to come.

“That’s right. Just like that, baby. Now, Bucky, please, tell me where we’re going.”

Bucky pulls away from Sam to turn the key and start the car, pulling out into the road.

“To pick up Maria. She’s ours now.”

Sam doesn’t know what he means. His brow furrows.

“Bucky, what -”

Then Bucky whispers, “We’re going to tell that sweet little angel that her papa’s with Mommy now.”

Sam doesn’t have the words.

-

Steve wonders, as he sees the truck coming straight towards him, two things.

One, what he’d say if he had the chance to say anything before he died.

(“You can’t do this to me,” Bucky had said, but Steve loves him, goddammit, he loves Bucky Barnes to the ends of the earth and he’ll spend forever wondering what they could’ve been if he’d just had the guts to say it sober.)

Two, did Peggy know?

(“Our daughter needs to learn to live with her new parents,” she’d said, and god, she can’t have meant him and Bucky. She can’t have, right?)

The truck hits and Steve can’t wonder anything anymore.

-

Maria sleeps in their bed that night, bursting into tears every so often. They both stay awake, her cradled in their arms and wrapped in one of Steve’s blankets with the stuffed bunny Peggy made her when she was born clutched in her hands.

“I miss him,” Maria cries. “This is so much worse than when Mommy died.”

Bucky buries his face in her hair with a wet laugh. His voice is thick with tears when he answers, “I know, детка. I know, I miss him too.”

Maria wails and turns to bury her face in his chest. “I only have you left, папа.”

Bucky doesn’t have the heart to correct her. (He’s not sure how alive he’s been in a long time.)

-

Both Peggy and Steve’s respective sets of parents are dead, so the only option is that she go into foster care. However, when the Judge arrives at their house at nine in the morning on a Saturday, Bucky opens the door in one of Steve’s old hoodies and pj pants, Maria held securely in his arms with her head resting on his shoulder and a stuffed bunny in her arms, Sam in the background, bustling around the kitchen making pancakes, and the Judge just sighs and hands them the custody papers he happens to have on him.

“Just sign these,” he says, “and she’s yours.”

Bucky stares for a moment, then kisses the side of Maria’s head and sets her down. She runs back into the house and he and Sam sign quickly, then wave the Judge goodbye and go to find - god, their  _ daughter _ \- watching old videos of her and Steve and Peggy in the living room.

She doesn’t notice them. They do nothing to change that.

-

“Are you okay?” Sam asks that night, curled in their bed with Maria asleep on a mattress on their floor - she still can’t sleep anywhere but their bedroom.

Bucky doesn’t answer.

-

“Yes,” Bucky says after dinner next week, while they’re washing the dishes and Maria is playing upstairs. Sam turns to him and Bucky gives him a sad excuse of a smile. “Last week, you asked me if I was okay. Yes. I am.”

Sam just closes the small distance in between them, kissing his boyfriend, and he doesn’t miss the slight desperation with which Bucky responds, pulling Sam tight against him, as if locking him in place, trying to make sure he never leaves.

“I’m okay,” Bucky reassures him, one last time, a single tear falling down his cheek.

Sam can’t bring himself to tell Bucky how much he hates it when he lies.

-

Sam knows soulmates aren’t real. He knows they never have been, never will be, but he likes to think that his is out there somewhere, waiting for him.

Because if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that Steve and Bucky were soulmates. And he’ll always wonder if he got in the way of the right thing, even if he knows that Peggy was the main obstacle and Maria is the best thing that’s ever happened to any of them and that they’d still be in this mess, because Steve still would’ve died and Maria would still be Bucky’s and Sam would still be here, pining desperately and endlessly for the man he tries and tries to make happy.

Because there’s one important detail he can never overlook, that makes him know he and Bucky never should’ve happened.

Sam can make Bucky happy, but he can never make him whole.

(He wonders if Maria knows any of this and what she thinks of love.)

-

It’s about five months after Steve’s death that Maria turns ten, and for her birthday, they go visit Steve and Peggy’s graves. (She insists.)

Maria’s wearing one of Steve’s old T-shirts, looking like a dwarf in it. One of Peggy’s bracelets is wrapped twice around her right wrist, and Bucky and Sam stand with her as she stares at the headstones in silence.

“I don’t remember Mommy much,” she finally says. “I remember she was beautiful. And I remember that she made me my bunny. And I remember that everyone was always telling me I looked just like her.”

Bucky nods, running his fingers through Steve’s daughter’s hair with a sad smile. “You do, детка.”

Sam says nothing, but lets out a deep breath in a heavy sigh. Maria turns and looks up at Bucky with tears in her eyes then.

“Did she love me, папа?” The little girl asks, voice breaking. “Did they?”

And Bucky just laughs wetly, picking up Maria and cradling her, allowing her to wrap her arms around his neck and bury her face in his neck.

“More than anything, детка,” he whispers. “As much as we do.”

And that’s when Sam can’t handle it anymore and he surges forward, wrapping his perfectly broken little family in his arms, kissing Bucky’s shoulder and then Maria’s hair, and he can feel Bucky’s fingers shift to rest on his arm, gripping him so tightly that his nails leave half-moon shapes in Sam’s dark arm.

But he doesn’t care. This is the closest he gets to mourning.

He’s been grieving his whole life.

-

Maria asks to take ballet, and they can’t just refuse her, not after everything she’s been through. So she becomes best friends with a boy named Jaime who’s five years older than her and dances her way around the empty classroom long after everybody else has left, because she loves it just that much.

And Sam will dance with her, will let her stand on his feet and pull him around, and they do this lopsided dance until Maria loses balance and falls, taking Sam to the ground with her, and the two of them just roll on the ground together, both lost in uncontrollable giggles.

Bucky watches them with a soft smile.

Natasha, Maria’s teacher, approaches him then.

“I see you, y’know,” she says. “I know you’ve had so much sadness in your life that you can’t possibly fathom the idea of being happy, because you’ve never truly felt that way before. There was always something holding you back. And I know there still is now.”

He turns to her then, captivated, and she takes both his hands in hers with a smile.

“But you should never take what you have for granted,” she says, softer, “and maybe you lost somebody, your other half, but you’ve been given three-eighths to work with,” she looks at Sam and Bucky follows. Then her attention’s back on him, but he’s still watching his beautiful boyfriend, giggling on the floor with who he thought was his soulmate’s daughter,  _ Stevie’s  _ daughter and he feels something in his chest that he hasn’t felt for a very long time.

Natasha’s hands leave his and she goes with one last whisper in his ear.

“Don’t waste it.”

-

They’re side by side in their queen bed, Bucky wrapped in one of Steve’s blankets, said man’s daughter sleeping in her own bedroom across the hall, finally, at peace and happy, and for once it’s Sam who speaks first.

“Are we happy?”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s not really sure of the answer - for so long it’s been no, because Steve was happiness and Steve was someone else’s, but now he has Maria. He has Sam. He has a life - that’s more than he ever thought he’d have.

“Dunno,” he answers, but it comes out more unsure and broken then he means it to, and then Sam sighs and rolls onto his side, facing Bucky.

“Look, I know I can’t be what Steve was. I know I can never be the love of your life, or your soulmate, or the person who completes you,” he says, and Bucky suddenly doesn’t know how they got here. Where here is. Who he is, what he wants, what he needs. “But maybe I can be the one who makes you smile. The one that makes it okay to wake up in the morning. The one that stands by you even when you don’t want it because you need it. I know I can’t be the one you loved like that, but at the very least I can be the one who loves you back.”

Sam touches takes Bucky’s cold fingers in his own warm ones with a melancholy smile, and Bucky’s speechless, until Sam whispers, “And that, I know.”

-

Bucky’s loved Sam since the moment he met him.

He realizes this when he’s lying in bed, sick with the flu and Maria’s at school and Sam’s asleep in the rocking chair right next to him, holding Bucky’s hand and a book in the other, hanging over the side as his body leans to the right, and Bucky’s just woken up and is still blinking groggily but he’s never seen so clearly.

Bucky’s always loved Steve too, no doubt. Definitely unrequited, always was, but Bucky did love him, even took the chance on kissing him and being with him for the short amount of time he could, just because he could at least accept Steve’s friend kisses and enjoy them. (Bucky calls them “friend kisses” in his head because he’s quite positive that Steve’s never felt an inkling of anything but strong friendship love for him, but nonetheless, the kisses were amazing.)

And he knows that he can never be whole. He knows that the one who always made him like that is six feet under. He knows that he’s now raising that one’s daughter like she’s his own, and he knows that she calls him “Daddy” like she is.

He knows that Sam’s always going to be there, and that Bucky is never going to want him not to be. And whenever he’s staring at the ceiling at night, asking Sam the questions of the universe, receiving only half-hearted comforts and silence otherwise, he knows that Sam means every single word he tries to downplay.

Like now, and Sam’s just poured out every thought he’s felt in the past god knows how many years, and his hand is warm in Bucky’s, a constant reminder of the ground beneath his feet and the oxygen he’s still breathing, and there are those wide, brown, warm eyes looking straight into his, so different from the angel-like baby blue of Steve’s.

It’s then Bucky realizes that he’ll spend forever with this man, even if everything about this man shouldn’t belong to him.

Because.

Bucky’s loved Sam all his life.

And so he tells him.

-

“I love you.”

Bucky’s never been a wordsmith. He’s never known what to say, in any situation, because what do you say when the love of your life tells you he’s in love with someone else? What do you say when their daughter is born and you have to watch from the sidelines as she grows up into a carbon copy of him that you somehow feel more obligated to protect than you do yourself? What do you say when that love dies and you’re left to pick up the broken pieces of what you used to be?

But as it turns out, to say only those three words is enough.

(Because for once in his life, Bucky says them to someone other than Steve Rogers and means it.)

-

When Bucky sees Natasha again, he’s smiling.

“You tell him?” She asks, and he shrugs.

“I’m happy,” he says, and then turns and kisses Sam, his hand holding tight to his daughter’s, and Sam doesn’t have to tell Bucky he hates it when he lies because for once in his life, Bucky isn’t lying.

Because for once in his life, Bucky doesn’t have to.

**everything is going to be alright.**

**maybe not today**

**but eventually.**

**\- somebody**

**Author's Note:**

> “If you can’t love the one you want, then love the one you’re with.”
> 
> i hope you enjoyed! :) thx for reading


End file.
